9 Tied to Militia Are Arrested in Plot

From the AP via the New York Times courtesy of Eschaton:

Nine suspects tied to a Christian militia in the Midwest are charged with conspiring to kill police officers, then attack a funeral in the hopes of killing more law enforcement personnel, federal prosecutors said Monday.

U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade said agents moved on the group because the Hutaree members were planning a violent reconnaissance mission sometime in April -- just a few days away.

And

"It is believed by the Hutaree that this engagement would then serve as a catalyst for a more wide-spread uprising against the government," the indictment charges.

It includes charges of seditious conspiracy, possessing a firearm during a crime of violence, teaching the use of explosives, and attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction -- homemade bombs.

The indictment charges members of the group conspired "to levy war against the United States, (and) to oppose by force the authority of the government of the United States."

More here.

Let's see, "Christian," para-military, extreme anti-government views, apocalyptic outlook. I think it's safe to refer to this Hutaree group as right-wing. But then, when shit like this happens, it's always right-wing. There's just no corollary on the left. I mean okay, we've got "eco-terrorists" in very small numbers causing some vandalism here and there, from time to time, and we've got PETA spraying animal blood on rich people, but the American left, even the far extreme left, doesn't have anything even coming close to guys in fatigues and camouflage running around with bombs and assault rifles plotting to blow up cop funerals. For that king of thing, you've got to go back to the 1970s, when the left did, indeed, have a number of wackos trying to spur on something Marxist and revolutionary and groovy.

It was stupid and dangerous then, and the shift from left to right over the decades hasn't done anything to make American terrorists any less stupid or dangerous. As with the "revolutionary" activity in the 1970s, which never had a chance in hell of fomenting Marxist rebellion in the US, right-wing terrorists today haven't a snowball's chance of kicking off a civil war for their Jesus and market utopia. But this kind of bullshit can and does get people killed: just as rational and loyal leftists in the 70s had a moral responsibility to condemn their stupid ideological comrades, so too do rational and loyal right-wingers today have a moral responsibility to condemn their idiot brethren.

I've got a funny feeling that's not going to happen anytime soon.

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